When in the Course of Human Events
by Beth Green
Summary: Major spoilers for "Playing With Fire." A missing scene, IMHO. Greg's POV.


IMHO the episode "Playing With Fire" didn't show us nearly enough of poor Greg. I hereby present Greg's point of view regarding his reaction to the lab incident.   
  
*****  
  
When in the Course of Human Events  
  
by Beth Green  
  
Lying here in the hospital, I've had a lot of time to do nothing but think. Of course, the reason for that is what happened to land me in a hospital bed in the first place. If you haven't heard, I got blown up. Yeah, you heard me right: blown up.  
  
The guy who's always taken the safe road, whose chosen career as a lab rat should have guaranteed that he'd remain safe behind the walls of his own personal domain, nearly ended up on a slab in the morgue. The thought of being the object of a forensic case study makes my stomach kick back a reminder that if I don't want to subject my battered body to the abuse an episode of vomiting would produce, I'd better find something else to think about, the sooner, the better.  
  
It's impossible for me to find a position that's anywhere near comfortable. There's two reasons for that. First, I've got a colorful collection of bruises and skin tears as a result of my becoming a human projectile when the lab exploded. What's even worse is the second reason: the burns.   
  
The pain medication they give me helps a little. It doesn't take away the pain so much as make me so loopy that I don't really care enough about the pain to give it my full attention. As if that weren't enough misery, the medication's side effects don't give me a whole lot of options when it comes to trying to focus my attention away from the pain. Between my drug-futzed vision and my brain's impaired ability while under the influence, there's no way that I can concentrate on TV, or reading, or even consider playing with the laptop computer that someone so kindly brought in for me to use. That doesn't leave a whole lot left in the way of distractions unless I cut back on the pain medication.  
  
Trust me, that's not an option. If your nerve endings were so injured that they kept sending a constant message nonstop to your brain, screaming, "I'm burning! I'm burning!" long after the heat source that injured you had been removed you'd take whatever medication you could get. If I'd suffered third degree burns, the nerve endings themselves would have been incinerated. So, the good news is I got first- and second-degree burns, not third-. The bad news is I got first- and second-degree burns.  
  
The only thing that helps besides the pain medication is the distraction provided by my visitors. At least, until today it helped. That was before Catherine paid me her last visit. I knew something was up by the way she was acting. All these days in the hospital, I'd kept going over and over things in my head, trying to figure it out. Was there something that I'd done, something that I'd left undone, something that I'd over looked that had caused me to get myself blown up? I couldn't find anything. That didn't mean it wasn't there. God, I prayed that meant it wasn't there to be found. At first, I thought Catherine was so awkward 'cause she didn't want to tell me what I'd done wrong.  
  
It took me a minute to realize that she was upset over what she'd done wrong. When it finally sank into my fuzzy brain that I was the innocent victim here, the first thing I felt was an overwhelming sense of relief. Until that moment, I hadn't realized how much I'd dreaded the possibility that I may have screwed up.   
  
By the time Catherine finished the whole sorry story, she was sitting there, eyes shining with unshed tears. It took me a minute or three to realize what she was waiting for. She wanted me to say that I accepted her apology. Maybe it was selfish and petty of me, but at the time, I couldn't do it. I was lying there, hurting and feeling sorry for myself. I didn't have any room in my psyche for being sorry for anyone else. What I did have room for was anger. I could feel it, threatening at the edge of my conscience. My anger was looking for a target to fan it into a bright, hot flame. Catherine had very conveniently provided the match.   
  
I was the innocent victim here. Where did she get off expecting me to give a little smile, a little wave, and let bygones be bygones? Up until I'd gotten blown through a goddamn window, I'd actually started to think that it might be possible for me to leave the safe haven of the lab, to go out on the street and become an honest-to-god CSI. Knowing my ambition, Grissom had allowed me off my leash on a case recently. I liked it. I liked it a lot. I'd been hoping to get the chance to do more.   
  
All that changed when I came this close to dying. At this moment, I don't know how in the hell I'll ever work up enough nerve to simply walk through the doors of the office again, let alone get anywhere near a crime scene. The thought scares me more that I want to think about. I don't want to be scared. I hate it, and I hate myself for feeling this way. Fear is not an acceptable emotion. I may not be the world's most macho guy, but I'm not a coward, damn it! It's so easy, and much more acceptable to my self-image to be angry, to try to toughen myself back up into some semblance of the man I used to be.  
  
Fortunately I was too tired to work up a proper rage while Catherine was here. I satisfied myself with the next best thing. I just looked at her and never said another word. Eventually I turned my head away from her sorrowful, sad eyes and pretended to sleep, secretly glad to know that I'd hurt her in return.  
  
***** 


End file.
